Manchester United v Seville: Marcus Rashford shackled again by his manager’s rigid approach

By the midway stage of the first half at Old Trafford last night, the raucous atmosphere that José Mourinho had called for had begun to resemble Manchester United’s performance: inhibited, nervous, beset by thoughts of what could go wrong.

It was strange in the aftermath of this chastening defeat to hear Mourinho claim that “the way we started was really good and really positive”. It was nothing of the sort. They had Romelu Lukaku and Marouane Fellaini competing for aerial challenges and scrapping for second balls and there was no guile, no lightness of touch whatsoever. Alexis Sánchez was out of sorts and off the pace; Jesse Lingard cannot have known precisely what he was meant to be doing in the No 10 role, given…